There is a difference between AI and a meme I think. AI is understood to run on ...

kaibee · on July 13, 2020

> There is a difference between AI and a meme I think.

Yes, I agree.

> AI is understood to run on computers, memes run on human brains.

This, I disagree with. I think the difference is something more like, "virus vs bacteria/multicellular organism", however both run on human brains.

Memes are more virus-like. Small data-payloads, only goal is to replicate and spread as fast as possible, lots of mutation.

This is not what corporations/nations are. They are far larger and more slow-moving, much more complex, with various immune systems, defense mechanisms, and goals.

Both only exist in/run on the "human brain" computational substrate, but the "corporation" is a distributed AI while memes are just viruses spreading from machine to machine. If all of humanity died tomorrow, Amazon and memes would both cease to exist.

aaron695 · on July 13, 2020

Ignoring Charlie Stross's definition, I would normally call HN emergent behaviour over AI.

Perhaps off topic, but clearly memes have also changed our hardware.

Old memes like religion will have definitely changed our evolution aka DNA and probably to make our DNA fit better with the meme.

Corporations perhaps don't have long enough on a person lineage to make the change, but it'd be interesting to investigate.